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New Release
All That Happiness Is: Some Words on What Matters

All That Happiness Is: Some Words on What Matters

Adam Gopnik
$17.99
Publication Date: April 23rd, 2024
Publisher:
Liveright
ISBN:
9781324094852
Pages:
64
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Description

From New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik, a slim, elegant volume presenting a radical alternative to our culture of relentless striving.

Our society is obsessed with achievement. Young people are pushed toward the next test or the “best” grammar school, high school, or college they can get into. Adults push themselves toward the highest-paying, most prestigious jobs, seeking promotions and public recognition. As Adam Gopnik points out, the result is not so much a rat race as a rat maze, with no way out. Except one: to choose accomplishment over achievement. Achievement, Gopnik argues, is the completion of the task imposed from outside. Accomplishment, by contrast, is the end point of an engulfing activity one engages in for its own sake. From stories of artists, philosophers, and scientists to his own fumbling attempts to play Beatles songs on a guitar, Gopnik demonstrates that while self-directed passions sometimes do lead to a career, the contentment that flows from accomplishment is available to each of us. A book to read and return to at any age, All That Happiness Is offers timeless wisdom against the grain.

About the Author

Adam Gopnik is a staff writer at The New Yorker and has written for the magazine since 1986. He has three National Magazine awards for essays and for criticism. The author of numerous best-selling books, including Paris to the Moon, he lives in New York City.

Praise for All That Happiness Is: Some Words on What Matters

This is one that every one of us—and recent graduates especially—needs to hear. In just 67 pages, New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik holds a mirror up to our achievement-obsessed world, bent on monetizing every hobby and accelerating every career move, and opens a door to a brighter future: one with accomplishment at its center . . . his overall argument is both humble and motivating. And the book is slim enough to fit in even the most cramped hatchback on move-out day!


— Charley Burlock - Oprah Daily

All That Happiness Is becomes a kind of call to respect the necessity and benefits of experiencing that sense of accomplishment and how once that happens, the work necessary to garner achievements comes more naturally . . . It took me maybe 20 minutes to read All That Happiness Is, not much of an achievement, but the full worth of a book isn’t in how long we took to read it, but in how long it lingers in our lives. In this case, Gopnik has accomplished much.


— John Warner - Chicago Tribune

Happiness is found not in ‘something gained but in something lost—the loss of ourselves in something ‘other,’’ according to this concise and elegant meditation from New Yorker staff writer Gopnik . . . he constructs a convincing case for the pursuit of individual fulfillment as both an end in itself and a precondition for an open society with strong communal bonds. The result is a thought-provoking look at an eternally fascinating topic.


— Publishers Weekly

The longtime New Yorker writer waxes philosophical in this slim, aphoristic book . . . Thoughtful contemplations on the pursuit to be happy.


— Kirkus Reviews